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Factors Influencing Refugee Women’s Adjustment in Quebec, Canada
Get PDFThis study examines the lived experiences and adaptation processes of refugee women in Quebec, Canada with their young children. The research focuses on understanding the complex challenges women encounter, including language barriers, employment difficulties, housing instability, and the absence of robust social support networks. Employing a phenomenological approach, the study captures the ways in which women navigate their new environment, emphasizing the role of resilience, community support, and individual coping strategies. The findings indicate that while refugee women express gratitude for the safety and opportunities provided in Canada, they face considerable obstacles in their daily lives, such as balancing child-rearing responsibilities with the need to acquire language proficiency and secure gainful employment. The study underscores the importance of targeted support systems to address the specific needs of refugee mothers, particularly in areas such as language acquisition, employment assistance, and access to flexible childcare. The insights gained from this research contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the refugee experience in Canada and highlight the necessity for policies that support the successful integration of refugee families
Soup City: A Bricolage Methodology to Navigate the Complexity of Homelessness Across Macro-Policy and Micro-Local Spaces
Get PDFWe cannot address a social problem like homelessness holistically without understanding its complexity. While homelessness is a complex social construct with a wide range of parameters, dynamic interactions, and a high level of uncertainty, two profound disconnects exist at the macro-policy and micro-local levels in approaching the problem. Macro-policy level decision-makers, including politicians and policymakers, wield influence over legislative frameworks and resource allocations that shape national or regional responses to homelessness. In stark contrast, the micro-local level amplifies the voices of unhoused individuals, grassroots organizations, social workers, and community advocates who confront homelessness directly within their local contexts. In this PhD journey, I explore the common ground between macro-policy and micro-local approaches to make sense of the complex nature of homelessness. Grounded in the theories of space and complexity, I conduct a multi-theoretical approach, bricolage, to collage the fragmented pieces of policy and local levels together and synthesize them creatively. At the macro-policy level, in a co-authored paper, I delved into narrations of homelessness among thirty-eight members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) through a Chronotropic lens. The findings reveal the dynamism, diversity, and assortment of dimensions related to time, space, and body in the analyzed narratives, highlighting five main perspectives: viewing homelessness as an issue of security, vulnerability, quantification, inclusivity, and human rights. At the micro-local level, I had a transformational journey with Le Collectif Comm-Un, a grassroots organization built on the cornerstones of self-advocacy, healing, and community engagement to approach homelessness in the Milton-Parc neighborhood of Montréal. Applying a heuristic lens, I observed that my one-and-a-half-year engagement with the Le Collectif Comm-Un community shifted my focus from understanding homelessness to examining the sick society I come from. My dialogic Comm-Un experience illuminated homelessness as a form of protest against the dominant political-economic system, capitalism, which reproduces everyday social injustice.
Finally, conducting a comparative analysis of findings from macro-policy and micro-local investigations, I found that the common ground between policy and local scales is a space characterized by heterogeneity, dynamism, and uncertainty, requiring collective praxis and interdisciplinary approaches. This space incorporates dualities like objectivity/subjectivity, formality/informality, individual/social, fixed/dynamic, vulnerability/human rights, and social identity/human interaction. Using theories of Carnival, embedded design, and insights from the Comm-Un community, I conceptualized this common ground, embracing all the dualities, with an imaginary spatial concept called Soup City. In Soup City, different actors from various levels of the macro-policy and micro-local spectrum meet to build human connection, suspend social hierarchies, decentralize knowledge production, challenge social norms, celebrate the power of community, and fuse their diverse intentions, resources, ideas, power positions, knowledge, strategies, worldviews, and stories. I, as a bricoleur and Comm-Un member, represent the Soup City space as a social game and art-informed participatory action research method for understanding the complexity of homelessness. I argue that we cannot make sense of the problem of homelessness without ongoing collective defining the problem, collective imagination, collective planning, collective action, and collective evaluation. No one can define and end homelessness except everyone. It takes a village
In Convenience
Get PDFThe felt sense that we inhabit a convenience economy and culture is by now widespread. Nested in this understanding are ideas about ease and comfort, perpetually new technologies, and empowered consumers, on the one hand, and growing inequalities and frictions between the speed and exhaustion that convenience engenders, on the other. Popular critics of Big Tech such as Tim Wu name this the ‘tyranny of convenience’, where the adoption of modern conveniences like the washing machine or the smartphone has the ‘ability to make other options unthinkable’. Academic and journalistic assessments of the rise of platforms like Amazon, Netflix, and Uber, but also Meituan, Grab, Jio, LINE, WeChat, Gozem, and Flipkart, among many others, paint a similar portrait. [Abstract from first paragraph of chapter]
ConfSys 4: An Advanced Conference Management System with Automatic Semantic Header Generation
Get PDFConfSys, a conference management system, has been used for over 15 years to manage a number of international academic conferences, such as C3S2E, IDEAS, and ICCM. It supports multi-event, multi-track conferences with a large number of user participation and submissions. It provides essential services such as setting up a conference, user sign-ups, call for papers, paper submissions, paper auction, paper allocation and review, blind debate, paper decision, author registration, final version submissions, automatic session management, presentation uploads, program generation, managing event sessions and electronic proceedings creation to efficiently manage and support the running of academic conferences and journals.
This thesis presents the fourth iteration in the ConfSys system to further accelerate enhancements and to incorporate new features keeping in sync with recent technological advancements. It presents new approach for Automatic Semantic Header Generation (ASHG 2) in Information Retrieval from academic documents such as research papers. ConfSys4 includes modules for document processing, information retrieval, and document classification. Document processing involves conversion of PDF documents to XML-formatted documents. Information retrieval involves extraction of paper-related details such as title, abstract, keywords, author names, emails, organizations, locations, affiliations, and author references present within the document. The extraction of author-related details ensures verification of the author metadata and references section for the submitted document. Document classification involves extraction of important subject headings (keywords) based on the contents of the submitted document. Thus, improving the paper submission, single/double/triple-blind review, and paper allocation process by reducing manual data entry by users. Additionally, ConfSys4 includes improvements to existing features, such as adding automatic reminder emails to program committee members for updating their topics of interest for improved paper allocation and using entity matching technique for author pairs identification with conflicting interests. Furthermore, the PayPal payment interface is improved to include a standard checkout feature for payments and PDF document generation for the final program, invoice, and payment receipt for user registration to events. These improvements in ConfSys4 ensure consistent metadata generation for papers, improved transparency, ease of usability, and operability for organizing committee members, authors, and system users of the ConfSys system
Shape Control and Residual Stresses Management in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Structures Manufactured Using Automated Fiber Placement
Get PDFThermoplastics are particularly well suited to the aerospace industry because of their superior mechanical properties and shelf-life when compared to thermosets. When manufacturing thermoplastic composite parts using automated fiber placement (AFP) technology, the high processing temperature and non-uniform cooling causes residual process stresses to arise. Constituent level or ply level stresses are residual stresses that come from interactions inherent to the composite system. They would be present in this carbon fiber reinforced polyether ether ketone (PEEK) material system regardless of the manufacturing method. Residual process stresses are laminate level stresses that arise from an external process, like AFP manufacturing.
AFP manufactured parts can include flat panels with free edges and fully constrained geometries like rings and cylinders. They express their residual stresses somewhat differently: flat panels will warp visibly as they cool, while the stresses present in rings will only be visible once they have been slit along their length. They will visibly spring in or out.
The goal of this thesis was to see if it was possible to use annealing to relieve the residual process stresses from thermoplastic composite structures manufactured using AFP without compromising laminate properties. These properties included crystallinity, void content, and fiber volume fraction. It would seem that the residual stresses in unidirectional panels with free edges can be mostly relieved with annealing. A 3-hour hold at 200˚C brought them to within 2mm of flat. However, the radii and spring-in or spring-out behavior of hoop-wound and asymmetric rings remained unaffected
Exploring protein candidates with enhanced cargo loading capabilities into Saccharomyces cerevisiae extracellular vesicles
Get PDFExtracellular vesicles (EVs) are a promising drug delivery platform as they compartmentalize bioactive payloads prior to delivery, have low immunogenicity, and are capable of tissue-specific targeting. EV-based therapeutics in most research pipelines are produced using cultured human mesenchymal stem cells. This approach is limiting as they are not amenable to complex genetic engineering, are expensive to grow and maintain, produce heterogenous EVs that are challenging to purify, and cannot be easily upscaled. Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is an excellent candidate for EV research, as it exhibits similar fundamental EV biology and may overcome these and other limitations. Using S. cerevisiae as a model, this study aims to determine if yeast strains expressing EV localization peptides can produce engineered EVs loaded with bioactive cargo. To achieve this, a panel of genetically modified yeast strains was generated to express fluorescently tagged versions of known EV markers and bioproduction was quantified with single particle analyses
The Effect of Sentiment, Media Mentions and Covid-19 Closures on Investor Behavior
No full textThe thesis comprises three essays exploring distinct aspects of market behavior influenced by external factors. The first essay studied the sentiment indexes' impact on insider trading behaviors, revealing insiders' propensity to trade against firm-specific sentiment. Notably, insiders strategically time their trades in a contrarian manner, especially concerning factors like R&D intensity and litigation risks around earnings announcements. As expected, statistically and economically insignificant associations of the sentiment proxies are found with both paper and actual dollar profits of round-trip transactions. The findings are cautiously interpreted as being consistent with the litigation-risk management of insiders by timing their trades contrarian to firm-specific sentiment and by not realizing paper profits over horizons of up to one year.
In the second essay, the focus shifts to analyzing the influence of media, particularly the Mad Money TV show, on investor attention and trading activities. The show's recommendations significantly affect institutional and retail investor attention, subsequently influencing trading volumes, short sales activities, and portfolio adjustments. The findings underscore the short-term price pressures driven by noise traders and the impact of media influencers on investor behavior and market dynamics.
The third essay explores the impact of daycare and school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on OTC investors' trading activities. The study reveals a significant negative association between closures and local firms' trading activities, particularly affecting smaller firms with lower institutional ownership and limited geographic dispersion. This adverse effect is attributed to pandemic-induced attention diversion among local investors with children, highlighting the interconnectedness between socio-economic factors and market behaviors during unprecedented events.
Overall, these essays contribute valuable insights into understanding how sentiment indexes, media influencers like TV shows, and external socio-economic factors such as pandemic-related closures can shape investor behaviors and market outcomes
Embracing Digital Technology by Older Adults: A Review of the Literature
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Embracing Digital Technology by Older Adults: A Review of the Literature
Elaheh Khademi
This comprehensive literature review was undertaken to advance our understanding of ways that technology can be a transformative force in the lives of older adults. By critically examining existing research, it summarises the current state of knowledge and pinpoints critical gaps in the field, offering some insights for both practical applications and future investigations. This review also highlights the significant potential of technology in enhancing social interactions and mitigating the pervasive issue of isolation among older adults. Leveraging technology to create meaningful social connections can substantially improve their quality of life, a prospect that deserves concerted attention and effort. Finally, this review encourages a continued commitment to research in areas that remain unexplored or underexplored within the current literature. By addressing these gaps, we can refine our understanding of how technology can better serve older adults and contribute to their overall well-being. This literature review not only provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of knowledge but also offers a roadmap for action. The recommendations put forth here, grounded in the identified gaps and opportunities within the existing literature, collectively aim to enhance the quality of life for older adults and facilitate their successful integration into the digital age
Ideological Narratives in Contemporary Russian War Genre Cinema
Get PDFThis thesis titled “Ideological Narratives in Contemporary Russian War Genre Cinema” explores popular commercial films about the Second World War produced between 2018 and 2022. Through analyzing popular culture and media this study aims to build a framework of contemporary Russian war genre cinema as a tool for the promotion of Vladimir Putin’s government’s ideological rhetoric. This thesis will focus on three case studies: war genre films T-34 [T-34] (2019, dir. Alekseĭ Sidorov), Zoya [Zoi͡a] (2020, dir. Leonid Pli͡askin and Maksim Brius), and To Paris! [Na Parizh!] (2019, dir. Sergeĭ Sarkisov). Each case study will be put in conversation with other media, such as music, literature, and television, as well as genres, such as comedy, melodrama, and documentary. Building on the works of Denise J. Youngblood and Nancy Condee, I will explore how these films sponsored by the Russian government through organizations such as the Russian Military and Historical Society, Culture Fund, and state-owned TV channels represent the current imperial and nationalist ideology in the country that has contributed to the military invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The feeling of patriotism manifested through continuous reproduction of the Second World War military history and glorified representation of the Russian characters is capitalized upon in this political context. The goal of this research is to demonstrate how these films restructure the memory of the Second World War into a commercial enterprise that actively contributes to the construction of the new Russian identity and rapid militarization of Russian society prior to and after the invasion of Ukraine
The Expedition
No full textThe Expedition is a novel that follows teenagers Duncan and Rose in the walled city of Dreslin. Both teens struggle to conform to the roles placed on them by their gender and class. Duncan, the scrawny son of poor factory workers, runs away to join an expedition beyond the city’s walls in an attempt to affirm his masculinity. Rose, the eldest daughter of a family precariously balanced on the periphery of the city’s elite, feels stifled by the expectations placed upon her to “secure” her family’s position through marriage. She begins to question the hierarchies she’s lived under her entire life.
Duncan’s expedition and his attempts to embody the stoic masculinity his city valorizes are both abject failures. Amidst an ever-mounting pile of bodies, Duncan comes to question and eventually rejects the values that caused him to sign up in the first place.
Parallel to Duncan’s expedition, Rose watches a full-scale workers' revolt, violently put down by the very powers that keep her family comfortable. While her engagement with the revolt is initially filtered through the windows of her family home in the wealthy part of the city, she, much like Duncan, eventually witnesses the violence of her society firsthand. While washing blood from her hair, Rose realizes that the only moral thing to do is to rebel. The novel tackles topics of class struggle, gender roles, and the fascist weaponization of toxic masculinity